The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica

By Bernadette Mayer b. 1945 Bernadette Mayer

Be strong Bernadette

Nobody will ever know

I came here for a reason

Perhaps there is a life here

Of not being afraid of your own heart beating

Do not be afraid of your own heart beating

Look at very small things with your eyes

& stay warm

Nothing outside can cure you but everything's outside

There is great shame for the world in knowing

You may have gone this far

Perhaps this is why you love the presence of other people so much

Perhaps this is why you wait so impatiently

You have nothing more to teach

Until there is no more panic at the knowledge of your own real existence

& then only special childish laughter to be shown

& no more lies no more

Not to find you no

More coming back & more returning

Southern journey

Small things & not my own debris

Something to fight against

& we are all very fluent about ourselves

Our own ideas of food, a Wild sauce

There's not much point in its being over: but we do not speak them:

I had written: "the man who sewed his soles back on his feet"

And then I panicked most at the sound of what the wind could do

to me

if I crawled back to the house, two feet give no position, if

the branches cracked over my head & their threatening me, if I

covered my face with beer & sweated till you returned

If I suffered what else could I do

"The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica" by Bernadette Mayer, from A Bernadette Mayer Reader. Copyright © 1968 by Bernadette Mayer. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Source: A Bernadette Mayer Reader (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1992)

Biography

An avant-garde writer associated with the New York School of poets, Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has spent most of her life in New York City. Her collections of poetry include Midwinter Day (1982, 1999), A Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), Another Smashed Pinecone (1998), and Poetry State Forest (2008). Known for her innovative use of language, . . .

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